Reviews: "Jim’s Spectacular Christmas" and "Treasure Island"

[x_los]

Jim’s Spectacular Christmas: This is a really reasonable celebrity seasonal children’s picture book that doesn’t feel like a pure cash-grab: wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. What’s actually odd is how ‘pleasant, but not great’ the book is given that Emma Thompson is a superb script writer and script doctor. She’s probably capable of considerably more than this? Still, it was not actively insulting. And for an entry into a category crippling publishing for serious writers due to terrible management decisions, that’s about what you can ask. Fun title pun.

Treasure Island: This was very convenient to listen to while working. Some thoughts I had during that process:

- I can't believe these rich people are just going to charter a random ship to treasure-town. They don't know from boats, and the pirates are well-aware that inn boy here has their shit. Every person he'd have gone to with this information is leaving this little town simultaneously on a MASSIVE BOAT. It's sort of a clue, you know? It's Suggestive. No wonder they get industrial sabo(a)taged.

- Everything about this crew hiring process made me stop to groan in the street. Rich people will kill us all.

- The pacing of this book is so proto-filmic, very 'now back to the good part'. Sea voyages take ages, so we do one scene from that and then press fast-forward.

- 'Silver must be longing to escape his wife! Why? Because she's black!' ... 'Just so black, you know? Am I right??' Look, Squire Dumbass. Don't make this--worse, for yourself. You've done enough.

- While Jim is distinctly jealous when Silver uses the same flattering phrases he buttered Jim up with on another sailor who Silver's trying to convert to his side, I think people over-egg the extent to which there's a special relationship between Jim and Silver. That idea would do emotional work, but in the text Silver's whole deal is that while he seems deeply authentic and confidential, it means nothing to him. That's part of why he's charismatic and terrifying. Despite the extreme disadvantages of his situation as a mutineer, when the treasure looks to be in sight Silver's still thinking about gutting Jim. And Jim knows it! This is not the homoeroticism I was promised, my lads.

- I don't really know why that "Black Sails" show cast such a streaky little grease-coated waster for this part, even if it was supposed to be 'Silver as a young man'. That seems to throw away compelling material. I only watched a few episodes of the programme, but I really can't see how you'd stage an effective 'learning to be Silver' arc from there. Even if you're going to do something else with the premise, Silver, the most iconic bit of the book, still seems like an odd, unnecessary element to consign to spoilage. Nice theme tune, though.

- Israel Hands, eh? I see.

- A lot of the pirates' appeal in this book comes from things adjacent to magic: Silver's charm, the (silly) quasi-intelligible cant, the ritual of the black spot, their deep superstition, their regular practice of low-level magic (i.e. with the bible which may or may not be 'good' for ritual usage after its spoliation), and the 'monstered' blind man who was killed at the initial raid on Jim's inn.

- What a wildly conservative story this is at its bones. The Squire may be a fucking moron, but he's a legitimate instantiation of social hierarchy. In this book, you can't shake social hierarchy without succumbing to childishness and facing annihilation. The pirates are fundamentally anarchic, and fall into increasing disorder in a quasi-racialised way. Never mind how vast wealth is always acquired via iniquity in some guise. If you can charter a ship, that's legitimate. If you can't, then you didn't deserve to. I note also that there's no mention of restoring these monies to anyone wrongfully deprived of them in this fantasy: passing through the hands of a pirate has laundered it all very clean. The crown evidently doesn't give a shit about this fortune either. Yet Ben Gunn still can't keep hold of his money because he's not the sort of person who's 'meant' to have money. He wasn't born well-off, and he's not Jim, the token sensible middle class representative of moderate and acceptable upward mobility.